By now , you ’ve belike heard the harebrained account of a 16 - yr - old male child whosurvived a five - time of day flightfrom California to Hawaii obscure in a bike well . How the inferno did his torso make it through sub - zero temperatures with little atomic number 8 ? Probably by locomote into “ suspended living , ” a strange , frozen state of matter that ’s about as penny-pinching you’re able to get to death without dying .
Since 1947 , 105 hoi polloi are known to have stow off in wheel wells , and 25 of them last , accord to the Federal Aviation Administration ’s Civil Aerospace Medical Institute . In many of those cases , the flights were shorter and at lower altitude , so this boy ’s story is certainly one of the more incredible . The Hawaii - bound flying flew as gamey as to 38,000 feet . Stowing away on that flight would be like come up past the top of Mt. Everest and back down in a few minute . Some expert have state incredulity at his survival , but security camera footage seems to affirm his tale .
Up in the atmosphere , there ’s three primary dangers : 1 ) lack of oxygen , 2 ) freezing temperatures , and 3 ) falling out of the bicycle well . O depletion would quickly criticize you unconscious , which is why falling is a finicky endangerment . As unusual as it may sound , the frigidity is likely what save up the male child from want of O , as metabolism slow down almost to a halt in set aside animation .
temperature outside the aeroplane at 38,000 ft can drop to 80 degree F below zero . The freezing conditions were probably enough to make his physical structure temperature drop twenty or thirty degree to come in the hibernation - like state of suspended animation . heartbeat and breaths slow up dramatically , and cellular activity in the soundbox nearly stops . If your organic structure is n’t doing much , it does n’t need much O . It was potential this state that allowed the boy to exist without brain damage .
heating plant from the hydraulic line that power the wheel as well as the cycle themselves , could also provide some cowcatcher from the frigidity , accord toan FAA account . That may be what facilitate the boy from put up severe cryopathy , which befall other surviving stowaway .
In the controlled condition of a infirmary , doctors will sometimes put patient role into suspended life to slow down tissue damage after , say , a heart attack or stroke . Thefirst human trialsof using the cold to do by harm patient are just starting up , too .
What ’s interesting is that the condition of this flight seem to be a crude estimation of a aesculapian procedure . Or , put another way , innovative medicine is often a precise series of steps that push the human body to its terminal point . Doctors assay to keep in line for as many variable as possible , but it ’s a forecast jeopardy . In the freewheel world of stowing away though , you ’ll need a massive dosage of luck . [ TIME , LiveScience , CNN ]
Top figure of speech : A sheet lands at Mineta San Jose International Airport , where the boy wax into a jet ’s wheel well . AP Photo / Eric Risberg
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